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II i i I II h , I , ' I , ,,; :; Montblanc writing instruments and writing inks are available at flOe stores, stationers, college stores and pen shops everywhere. i:: announcement of the elections, in or- der to form a new splinter Congress group called the Congress for Democ- racy. Then, there was Jaya Prakash Narayan, an elder stateslnan of Indian politics, who had come increasingly to wield spiritual influence over the coun- try. Yet all the political euphoria seemed to be based on wishful thinking. The J anata Party had been formed so hastily from the decImated ranks of the opposi- tion parties-which had been all but destroyed by the Emergency-and in- cluded politicians of such disparate ide- ologies, and was so deficient in organi- zation and money that it was hard to imagine its surviving the campaign, let alone having the dbility to win the election or to govern the country. And, however compelling the political issues at stake, the oppositIon had barely two months to get its message across to an electorate of some three hundred and twenty million voters, most of them dispersed over more than half a million villages. Moreover, the sudden death, in February, of Fakhruddin Ali i\.hmed, the President of India, cur- tailed political activities for several days, so the time left for campaigning was still shorter. Even the strength of the opposition leadership was deceptIve. 1\1rs. Pandit was less well known as a politician at home than she was as a Jiplomdt abroad, for she had served as High Commissioner in England, and as ambassador to the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Nations. Morarji Desai was so rigid in his ad- herence to the puritanical principles of Gandhi's thought that he had few supporters in the political and military establishment; besides, he was eighty-one years old and was a member '\\ of the routed old Congress. J agjivan Ram, although for- mally a member of Mrs. Gandhi's Congress "new guard," was actually a hold- over from the old Congress. All along, he had been a to- ken Untouchable in the government, tolerated and eVen courted because of his powerful political constituency rath- er than for any special administrative talent or intellectual ability. There was also a touch of political scandal about him: for nearly ten years, he had failed to pay any income tax. \Vhen caught, in 1969, he claimed that it was an oversight. Mrs Gandhi publicly for- gave him for his "forgetfulness." (In 1966, he had been possibly the decisive force in Mrs. Gandhi's election as Prime Minister.) Jaya Prakash Na- L I I , 'I' rayan, who was seventy-four, was so sick with a kidney condition that he campaigned at the risk of his life and in the last days hefore the electIons was forced to cancel all his political engagements. Even the "relaxed" aspect of Mrs. Gandhi's "relaxed enforcement" of the Emergency struck some Indian ob- servers as more apparent than reï1. .For example, she claimed that she was releasing all political prisoners, and, indeed, the immediate release of well- known prisoners gave the impression of good faith, but it soon became clear that many of the lesser-known state and district political workers were not beIng released. When the J anata leaders confronted Mrs. Gandhi with thIs anomaly, asking how there could be "free elections" when some of the political workers were unfree, she hedged; the state a u tho ri tie s were probably negligent in carrying out her orders, she said, or else the political workers concerned must actually have been imprisoned for hoarding or black- marketing, and so were never eligible for release. Although many of these lesser-known prisoners were eventually released, others were not, and some of them helJ a twenty-four-hour hunger strike a few days before the elections to dramatize their plight. J aya Prakash Narayan, protesting the continued de- tention of such prisoners, went so far as to call the supposed relaxation of the Emergency and the holding of the elec- . " k " tIons a moc ery. In the second week of March, there were reports that Mrs. Gandhi's gov- ernment was moving the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police to district headquarters through- f out the country. These re- ports gave rise to fears that I Mrs. Gandhi intended to rig I the election, as Prime Min- ister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had just done in Pakistan (and ".. Tq perhaps to overturn the re- sults if they went against her). Bhutto had announced electIons there a few days before Mrs. Gandhi had made her announcement. Indeed, it was said that Bhutto had shamed her in to holding elections, because if he, an obvious dictator, could risk elections, how could she, a professed democrat, avoid them Pakistan had held elections on the seventh of March. Two hun- dred seats for Parliament had been at stake, and Bhutto's government had declared that the ruling PaJastan Peo- ple's Party had won most of the seats; the principal opposition leader, Air